The Weird Thing That Happens to Your Vagina After You Give Birth

New moms don't always rush to talk about sex after giving birth. “There comes a time a few weeks after you’ve given birth, you’re in a room with all of your new mommy friends and some brave soul asks the question, ‘Has anyone had sex yet?’” Vlogger Riona O’Connor says in a new video, which is published on her Facebook page, The Unnatural Woman. “A hush falls over the mommy crowd and then everyone starts talking at once, because you know what? No one has!”

But O'Connor admits she had sex "too soon" after giving birth, adding, “What was I thinking? We discovered that downstairs is as dry as the Sahara desert. Dry. Dry. Dry. Dry…. Seriously, if my vagina was a motorway, there would have been a sign up saying No Through Road; if it was a shop, there would have a sign up going Closed." Plenty of women in the comments talked about how they can relate, so clearly O’Connor is on to something.

You’ve probably heard that many things can happen to your vagina after you give birth, but for some reason, nobody likes to talk about vaginal dryness.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen—it definitely does. “It’s very common, especially among women who are breastfeeding,” says Michael Cackovic, M.D., a maternal fetal medicine physician at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. There’s been a big push from the medical community in recent years to encourage moms to breastfeed, and Dr. Cackovic says the rates of postpartum vaginal dryness have gone up with it. “We’re seeing more and more patients at their six-week postpartum visit saying, ‘Oh, by the way, my vagina is really dry,’” he says.

If your vagina is dry, you’ll probably know it. But, if you’re not sure, you can grab a makeup compact and take a look. A dry vagina looks very flat, while a "normal" vagina looks supple, Dr. Cackovic says.

Luckily, you’re not doomed to having a dry vagina for the rest of your life—Dr. Greves says it typically gets better once you stop nursing, if you’re breastfeeding, or with time. But that doesn’t mean you have to suffer through it in the meantime. A lube like K-Y Jelly can help, and your doctor may also recommend a topical estrogen cream that you can apply vaginally. “That’s usually enough to help,” Dr. Cackovic says.

Doctors typically recommend that women wait until six weeks after they've given birth to have sex again, although Dr. Cackovic says he just wants women to wait until they've finished bleeding, which is usually after two or three weeks. And if you have a vaginal delivery and experience tearing, you might want to wait a little longer. Be sure to use lube when you go for it—you're going to need it. Women often assume that painful sex is just part of getting frisky again after having a baby, but Dr. Cackovic says that pain is usually due to a case of vaginal dryness.

It also doesn’t hurt to flag the issue for your partner and let them know you might need some extra foreplay to get you warmed up. Remember: This is a temporary situation and your vagina will be back to its normal, well-lubed state in no time.